Chapter Eight

Later. Much later. I’d fallen asleep at some point, tangled in a pile of limbs with Saori. She hadn’t woken up yet. Probably not surprising; I hadn’t actually had a nightmare, but I could hardly ever sleep deeply. I didn’t sleep very long most of the time, either; I usually woke up in the afternoon, but that was because I went to bed after sunrise often as not. I wasn’t sure I could extricate myself from the tangle without waking her, and didn’t try. I was quite content to stay where I was, though I did free one arm enough that I could stroke her hair while she slept.…

Photosensitivity vs. Visual Overload

Kyoko closes her eyes to mitigate her sensory overload. There’s an interesting point here, and it’s just obscure enough that if someone does notice, it would be easy to think it’s a mistake on my part. To avoid that, and because it brings up some interesting details, I thought I’d write up a discussion of the topic.…

Chapter Seven

Saori’s car was a disaster, to a degree I had to somewhat admire. It wasn’t exactly that it was messy. There was none of the fast food detritus that often showed up in someone’s vehicle if they weren’t fastidious. There was very little trash of any kind, in fact. But it was cluttered with a bewildering array of random objects. The medical kit and emergency blanket, I could understand. Four decks of playing cards and a sack of dice made a degree of sense. Even the two coils of climbing rope, sledgehammer, electric drill, and spray paint, while maybe a little suspect, I could see why someone would have in their car.…

Chapter Six

I really wasn’t very good at indirect approaches most of the time. Not when it came to social situations. I used to try to be polite, to follow rules of etiquette and use social niceties. And what I found was that while I can do it, I do still know those rules, using them in any but the most formal of contexts just never seemed to work for me. I will fumble over my words, say the wrong thing, struggle to convey my meaning. When people do the call-and-response pattern that characterizes a lot of small talk, I respond in ways that do not line up with the other person’s comment at all. This was overwhelmingly the lesson I had learned from trying.…

Chapter Five

In the funeral home, relaxing my normal restrictions on my awareness had hit me like a drug. The vivid, oversaturated intensity, the way every sensation felt sharper and more real, it had left me euphoric, thrilled, and satisfied. In a controlled environment where the things flooding my senses weren’t terrible, the experience was an intense, rapid high. Hell, sometimes I did it just for that reason at home, when I was particularly bored, and spent a while drifting in a wash of magic and sensation until I passed out. When I was getting actively pleasant inputs, it could be an intensely pleasurable experience.

This situation, though, was none of the above. And while that rush of sensation still hit me like a drug, this time it was more like nine kinds of bad trip happening all at once. I opened my eyes and instantly regretted every life choice that had led me here.…

Chapter Four

The next two days passed uneventfully. I received no calls from Audgrim, no inexplicable messages, nothing. And so I spent the time much as I normally did. I slept as poorly as usual, and woke in the afternoon still tired. I had conversations with my houseplants, which still did not reply to me. I was grateful for that, really. I figured that it was a little weird to talk to plants, but I was strange enough in general that it just further cemented me as eccentric. If they started talking back, that was when I’d know I’d gone insane. Or, at least, more insane than I already was.…